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Man accused in Ore. mall shooting had 'weird look'

Published on NewsOK
Modified: December 13, 2012 at 7:19 pm •
Published: December 13, 2012

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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Before police say Jacob Tyler Roberts walked into a mall wearing a hockey-style mask, firing gunshots that killed two people and injured a teenage girl, he visited the brother of his roommate, hugged him and told him he was going "somewhere south, somewhere warm."

Leslie King, right and Tenille Beseda place flowers Wednesday Dec. 12, 2012, at the entrance to the scene of a multiple shooting yesterday at Clackamas Town Center Mall in Portland, Ore. A gunman who opened fire on shoppers at the mall had no connection to the two people he fatally shot and wanted to kill as many people as possible, police said Wednesday. (AP Photo/Greg Wahl-Stephens)

The roommate, 26-year-old Jaime Eheler, also said Roberts "had a weird look on his face" when he left the house they shared.

Hours later, three people were dead, including Roberts, who shot himself after the Tuesday rampage.

Although officials have not yet revealed a motive, a clearer picture of Roberts is emerging. According to his aunt, a foot injury prevented him from joining the Marines. He enjoyed skydiving and once wanted to be a smokejumper, according to Eheler. His mother died of cancer when he was young, he left his aunt's house as a teenager and lived with Eheler's family for a while, and he had told friends of plans to live in Hawaii for a year.

"I never saw this young man raise his voice," Eheler said, sobbing. "I've seen him sad, I've seen him hurt. I've never seen him mad."

The Clackamas County sheriff's office said Roberts had several fully loaded magazines when he arrived at the mall Tuesday as thousands did their Christmas shopping. Roberts parked his 1996 Volkswagen Jetta in front of the second-floor entrance to Macy's and walked through the store into the mall and began firing randomly in the food court, authorities said.

Eheler said Roberts had recently quit his job at a gyro shop in Portland, sold all of his belongings, and put his car up for sale on Craigslist in advance of his planned move to Hawaii.

She said his decision to move to the islands caught her by surprise, but only a little bit. He told her he planned to live off the interest of an inheritance that he had invested, and that he planned to return on Oct. 25, 2013.

"He's adventurous," Ehler said. "That's who he is."

Roberts' ex-girlfriend, Hannah Patricia Sansburn, told ABC's "World News with Diane Sawyer" that he was supposed to catch a flight Saturday but he got drunk and missed it.

The owner of Big Bertha's, a sandwich shop where Roberts most recently worked, threw a going away party for him last week.

"His nickname there at the shop was 'The Kid,'" said Thomas Illk, father of Tommy Illk, who owns the shop. "Tommy is just devastated. He was like a little brother to him."

Police say Roberts had stolen an AR-15 rifle from someone he knew. Authorities said that after the shootings, he fled along a mall corridor and into a back hallway, down stairs and into a corner where police found him dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot.

The shooting confounds Eheler. She said she knew that Roberts had gone target shooting in the past, but there were no guns in her house, and she'd never seen him with one.